Seattle’s Black Ends describe their sound as “gunk pop,” cleverly avoiding being stuck in the grunge box despite their city of origin and citing Nirvana as one of their key influences. On their debut full-length, Psychotic Spew, the band creates dark, broody, melodic punk that synthesizes psychedelia, blues, art-rock, and metal into a sound that is both informed by their predecessors in the Seattle scene and also entirely their own. Lead singer, songwriter, and guitarist Nicolle Swims crafts lyrics that delve deep into the psyche, exploring darker thoughts and emotions with a sharp humor that keeps you from teetering too far into the abyss. Swims’ deft guitar skills play well off of the instrumentation of bassist Ben Swanson and drummer Billie Jessica Paine. This is a band that has spent years honing not only their music but also their chemistry, which is evident both in their recordings and live performances. Cellist Lori Goldston, who collaborated with Nirvana on In Utero, also lends her talents on several tracks, including the deliciously menacing “Black’s Lullaby.” “Pour Me” and “My Own Dead” might invoke the most direct comparisons to Nirvana (particularly Bleach), though Swims’ vocals are arguably more pop than punk. The sludgy yet catchy “Pretend 2 Be (Protect Me)” is the epitome of the gunk pop sound, while “Bent” is a hook-filled tune about dissociation that invokes the likes of Sleater-Kinney and Hole. Psychotic Spew is a reimagining of the so-called Seattle sound, not an imitation but music that would, as KEXP writer Martin Douglas recently wrote, “sound just as fitting in 1994 as it would today, and probably in 2054.” —Mary Beth Campbell
While most people know Claire Givens as the vocal talent behind local art-pop band People Museum, her first solo release, Live From The Marigny Opera House, strips away the layers of synth and brass—and admittedly glorious funk—of her band’s work to lay bare her innate gifts. The six-song album has a run time of just under 20 minutes, but in that time Givens brings us along on a deep, emotionally rich journey. Opener “Lullaby For The Grieving” is a quietly stunning track, and for anyone walking the road of life with grief as a constant companion, you will feel the lines, “Quietly I’ll hold you the rest of the way / In this heart of mine you’re tucked away” in your bone marrow. On “A Perfect World” you can hear how, with a full band, this song would be a certified pop hit (cue the undeniably catchy chorus of “You’re living in a perfect world / I don’t even know you now / You hardly even know yourself / How could you tell the truth?“). “Heavy Daughter” deftly balances urgency and languidness as it grapples with themes of generational harm and breaking cycles. On “The Edges” we see Givens’ vocal chops on full display as she climbs and slides up and down scales, undulating alongside the rich tones of the piano (she was backed on this recording by fellow classically-trained pianist Laura Fisher). With “Cracks” she warns us to remember “the fragileness of it all” against the backdrop of a deeply synthy groove. Givens closes with “Surely,” the album’s longest track, making a bold statement about shaking loose the ties that hold us back in life, ending on both a metaphorical and literal high note. Whether you’re into People Museum or not, if you’re a fan of introspective, classically-influenced singer-songwriters, you won’t regret picking up this lush, gorgeous offering from a stalwart local talent. —Erin Hall
Flowers, the latest solo album from New Orleans instrumentalist and songwriter Max Bien Kahn (Tuba Skinny), is a jaunty set of songs that are perhaps best described as synth-tinged folk rock, combining “electronica with lap steel” to generate a sound that is both of the past and the future. The title track is, as Kahn describes on his Bandcamp page, based on the concept: “What if Suicide made a folk song?” “Ghost Song” is reminiscent of both 1950s doo-wop and ‘60s girl groups, with synths utilized to create a specter-like presence (no pun intended), while tracks such as “Return” and closer “Mama” lean more into ‘60s country twang. Kahn collaborated with friends and fellow New Orleans music scenesters Ross Farbe (Video Age, Native America), Howe Pearson (Deslondes), and Cameron Snyder (Deslondes) on this record, each artist bringing their own distinctive flavors. Jazz, folk, and electronic influences obviously form the basis for the sound, but so does a certain humor and irreverence. Indeed, Kahn’s lyrics tackle relationships, death, and loss in its many other forms, but the songs are also cut through with a sense of jocularity and optimism. There isn’t a sense that Kahn is avoiding any sort of big emotions, but rather that humor helps us understand and navigate not only our feelings but also our humanity. —Mary Beth Campbell
Traversing themes of female rage, social disconnection, self-doubt, and empowerment, The Linda Lindas—consisting of sisters Lucia and Mila de la Garza, their cousin Eloise Wong, and Bela Salazar—provide a faithful view into the spirit of girlhood through the deliverance of their sophomore album. No Obligation offers a refreshing take on the classic coming-of-age trope, pulling influence from power pop, pop punk, riot grrrl, and indie rock. With a bold open, 16-year-old Wong’s gritty vocals and vehement lyrics set the tone for the record on the surf punk-leaning eponymous track. Through a compelling rejection of adherence to traditional femininity (“You’d like me better if they didn’t stare / You’d like me better if I grew out my hair”), it becomes clear at the outset that the record refuses to shy away from critical analysis as an avenue to self-actualization. The single “All In My Head” offers perspective into the multifaceted experience of girlhood, this time an angsty dissociation painted bright with a youthful sense of wonder by Lucia de la Garza’s melodies. True to form, the adolescent girl group navigates an exploration of gender, identity, and rebellion against societal expectations. With catchy hooks, sweet harmonies, and a guitar-forward sound, the album’s resemblance to Paramore comes as no surprise, given the established history between the pop punk classic and producer Carlos de la Garza, father of Lucia and Mila. His prolific discography includes numerous Paramore releases dating back to their 2013 self-titled album. Although arguably an industry plant by virtue of nepotism, The Linda Lindas’ vivacity and genuine talent offset the disdain that typically accompanies the term, and No Obligation’s critical success lends itself to setting the record straight. —Victoria Conway
In light of today’s political climate, one must ask oneself where art can reflect the wrought emotions brought upon us by current events. Nonlethal Weapons could very well be the soundtrack to the plight of the atrocities taking place between war and response. All the Universities Have Been Destroyed is a pulsating mantra, like a speeding car that could crash at any minute, yet stays afloat beckoning you to listen. Songs such as “Terrorist Sympathizer” and “Consensual Hallucination” aren’t unlike tactile manifestos, an upheaval to move the body, to jut forward, to counteract the miniscule humdrum of newscasters bringing bad updates every hour from places far away. This album is a reflection and a reaction to scholasticide, to war, and to introspection, a gift for all of those in need to listen clearer from the noise outside and take action. —Sara Nicole Storm
Brighton, U.K. quartet Porridge Radio has seen their indie rock star rise over the past four years, with the release of Every Bad in 2020 and Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky in 2022, launching them more firmly in the eyes of the international post-punk and indie scenes. With fame comes pressure, which, as anyone who has done anything creative for an audience knows, can lead to burnout. Faced with this pressure, as well as the dissolution of a relationship, lead singer and songwriter Dana Margolin turned to writing poetry, which eventually morphed into the tracks for the band’s latest release, Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me. Clouds In The Sky is more anthemic than the band’s past efforts, though they do not stray completely from their post-punk roots, knowing when to lean into grander arrangements and when to scale back. Album opener “Anybody” invokes feelings of a church choir, the first bright notes moving into a soft drum line and simple guitar part that build with Margolin’s vocals to reach an emotionally charged climax that is both sharp-edged and melodic. “God Of Everything Else” is a gut-punch of a break-up song that is more about self-love and forgiveness than regret, with simple verse arrangements building up to the cacophonous chorus and back again (“I’m the God of everything else / You’re the God of losing me”). Clouds In The Sky is at once elegiac and hopeful, Margolin facing her emotions head-on without letting herself or the music be controlled by them. Grief and burnout, after all, do not last forever—it doesn’t always feel like it, but there is often a reprieve of some kind on the other side. —Mary Beth Campbell
Former SPLLIT member Stevie Spring’s solo project STEEF is back with another heavy dose of glorious freak rock! This local project is goofy on a multitude of levels (ranging from costumed live performances to hngryhrnybrkn’s peculiar album cover), but listeners shouldn’t write it off as mere gimmick music. In fact, the sheer absurdity of this project is one of its most powerful assets. Spring is an artist who paints with a bold, unconventional color palette that creates new manifestations of old themes. “Cough E,” a tribute to the far too relatable coffee-fueled anxiety spurts, conjures feelings of unease with clanky guitars and angular synths that clash on top of drum machine programming. The sound is far from conventional, but it aptly captures the jittery sense of angst illustrated by the song’s vocals. Throughout hngryhrnybrkn (pronounced “hungry horny broken”), Spring uses similarly peculiar combinations of sampling, synths, guitars, and drum machines to contemplate the album’s namesake themes. The result is an off-kilter sound that makes me uncomfortable but excited for every coming note that soundtracks lines like (from “God’s Thumb”), “Today was one of those days / Where the only thing I felt was a burger being ground up in my mouth.” —William Archambeault
JEFF the Brotherhood are back as a full-fledged heavy psych rock band under the new moniker Vorhex Angel. This development won’t come as much of a surprise to those who have followed the Brotherhood’s journey from rowdy hardrocking rippers in the aughts to exploring chiller and lengthier psych rock on their most recent album Ye Olde…, which came out in 2022. What does come as a welcome surprise is Vorhex Angel’s emphasis on blistering guitar leads and feedback, which clearly owes heavily to Japanese psych noisemakers like Les Rallizes Dénudés, Mainliner, and White Heaven. While Ye Olde… was defined by a take-a-chill-pill approach to psych, Vorhex Angel’s take on the genre feels harsher and more urgent. This New Orleans-based band features the Orral brothers joined by guitarist Kunal Prakash (a longtime collaborator who is practically an adopted third brother at this point), and live bassist David Sabludowky, who leads the local punk project D. Sablu. This live tape captures Vorhex Angel’s second show, an appearance at the Blue Room at Third Man Records in Nashville that followed their debut at the Mudlark. This cassette release fittingly features a cassette recording of the Third Man appearance, serving as a rather raw document of the group’s powerful psych rock. Far from a pristine studio recording, this approach actually works in the group’s favor, adding some extra grit to the band’s already dirty sound. —William Archambeault
Until 2022, Twitter was in a state of semi-neglect under leaders seemingly unsure how to steer the idiosyncratic platform. Smaller than Facebook and Instagram, and plagued by harassment and hate speech, Twitter still managed to host active communities like “#NOLATwitter” and many other special interest groups, as well as critical breaking news and disaster discussions. Then, Elon Musk bought it and turned it into X, as his own posts shifted from Tesla marketing and dad jokes to a firehose of Trumpist ideology. Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, tech reporters at The New York Times, chronicle the buyout and Musk’s leadership, including endless strange moves and missteps that have seen the business plunge in value and U.S. engagement. Even close followers of tech news will learn something new about incidents like when usage was capped so tightly it was difficult to read any tweets, and the chaotic staff purge by Musk and his sycophantic lieutenants. A welcome antidote to Tulane toff Walter Isaacson‘s Musk bio, it resembles recent chronicles of management debacles at Theranos, WeWork, and Uber, with the exception that Musk still controls X, even as many users jump ship—and once-vibrant communities splinter, failing to migrate elsewhere en masse. —Steven Melendez
In 2017, NPR debuted their “Turning the Tables” series, in which the team not only explored musical contributions by women throughout the ages, but rather ventured to define the movements of musical history by the work of women. No longer a footnote to be mentioned beneath odes to Elvis or the Rolling Stones, women’s work in blues, jazz, rock’n’roll, r&b, folk, country, hip-hop, and more take center stage. The series painted women musicians as the trendsetters, not the coattail riders they’re so often portrayed as in popular culture. How Women Made Music is a collection of this knowledge, interspersed with artist interviews and quotes alongside longform critical essays. Well-respected local music scribe Alison Fensterstock serves as the editor for the collection with an intro by NPR’s Ann Powers and an afterword by Marissa Lorusso (formerly of NPR, now Contributing Editor at Pitchfork). The flow of the book works well, finding its storyline by gathering artists not under genre umbrellas, but rather categories: Tradition Bearers and Breakers, Scream Queens, Shredders, Storytellers, Teenage Kicks, Empaths, and so on. In this way, you can move from reading about Meg White to Maybelle Carter to Roberta Flack in a matter of pages, finding throughlines in their work that transcend traditional genre boundaries. For the most part, the tome is well laid out, arranging multiple smaller snippets and quotes together between each of the longform essays. There are ultimately over 100 author-contributors at work in these pages, so readers will likely enjoy some writers’ style more than others. I found some sections—even on artists I deeply admire—to drag or just not hit quite right. At the same time, I found entries on artists I wasn’t as familiar with to be captivating, simply based on the angle the writer took and how they executed their piece. With the high amount of snackable content present, it’s an easy read in terms of pace, but I found it edifying to also listen to the audiobook alongside reading, as many times the quotes from artists or clips from interviews were rendered in their own voices, adding a richness and depth to the story. It’s a great read for anyone who loves exploring larger trends in music, folks who nerd out about people’s artistic processes, and those interested in learning more about the women behind some of music’s most impactful movements. —Erin Hall
Beginning in 1947, a Connecticut sheriff named J. Edward Slavin operated a bizarre touring exhibit called “Jail on Wheels,” designed to fight juvenile delinquency. Slavin was a former carnival worker, and he packed garishly decorated buses with a mix of weapons and police equipment, replica jail cells, and an execution chamber featuring an electric chair and a mannequin representing the condemned. Famed prison abolitionist Mariame Kaba commissioned this slim volume from historian Jacqui Shine and wrote the book’s foreword. Shine elegantly puts the exhibit in the context of 20th century moral panics, “scared straight” programs shown to do more harm than good, and the history of punishment as lurid entertainment. Louisiana and Mississippi operated real mobile electric chairs in the 1940s, she points out, traveling to local courthouses and jails for public executions. And Mississippi’s high profile executioner was himself a former carnival performer Shine compares aesthetically to Simpsons villain Sideshow Bob. Her detailed research—with endnotes very worth reading—and sharp writing make what could have been a brief article about a historical curiosity (that, amazingly, survived Slavin to tour until the late 1990s) into a genuinely thought-provoking work with many memorable, curious details. —Steven Melendez
Rogue, a woman with the ability to absorb others’ powers and memories through touch, is being hunted for trying to recruit young mutants she found at the X-Men’s new home in New Orleans. Rogue’s team has a classic training day episode occur for the southern rendition of the training facility called the Danger Room. Backstories told from the Outliers squad of the X-Men were short and to the point in trying to evoke sad emotion from readers. Rogue’s journey to guide the next generation of wayward mutants’ adherence to the X-Men’s mission statement is being challenged both by a potentially apocalyptic mutant hidden within the Outliers and the dark figure of Professor X’s romantic past, who murderously stalks these teenagers. Between the heavy dialogue are lots of laughs—no surprise, since it features Nightcrawler, Rogue’s adopted brother. Writer Gail Simone also paired Nightcrawler, who has faced discrimination because he looks like a blue devil, with the Outliers, who are characters Simone created to represent invisible disabilities. Simone and artist David Marquez are proving to be a powerhouse of a team. This issue contains well-designed, dazzling moments that feel bright with Rogue’s character fully in the spotlight. Rogue is the closest she has conceptually ever been to replacing Professor X: She wants to do more than just give mutants a home and education, make political decisions as a mutant leader, and positively guide individuals’ moral direction. Readers can see her character completely in the thick of accomplishing those leadership goals here. —Jamal Melancon-Hill
“THERE IS NO AUTHORITY BUT YOURSELF”
Crass was an English anarcho-punk band active from 1977 to 1984, whose loud DIY experimental sound and songwriting diagnosed systems of oppression and inequality, critiquing war, injustice, racism, sexism, speciesism, religious oppression, and punk itself. Anti-authoritarian and anticapitalist, Crass published its own recordings, charging only the cost of production. Recent reinterest in zines and the material culture of communities existing outside of mainstream, corporate realms has inspired multiple museum exhibitions, books, and auctions. Conversely, Crass: A Pictorial History 621984 – 4022024 lands as a beautiful outlier as a self-published text organized with the care of a family album.
The book opens with photos of Dial House, a verdant, self-sustaining English farm cottage of communal living established in 1967 by Crass member Penny Rimbaud, who removed all of its door locks. Dial House is an intentional and ongoing social experiment and a key to understanding the band’s relationship to ownership, collaboration, money, and equality, and its longevity gives credence to these values, though Crass officially disbanded in 1984. Visual artist and Crass member Gee Vaucher has worked on this publication with support from partner-collaborator Rimbaud for decades. In her introduction, Vaucher admits to omitting accreditations and identifications of other contributors and their labor over the years, which parallels the intentional collective nature of the band and its environment. The book is organized chronologically, introduced by a world political timeline for each year/section from 1977 to 1984.
1977 opens with Rimbaud’s booklet, “Christ’s Reality Asylum,” a critique of England’s God, Queen, and country ethos, with his hand-printed lettering and a block-stenciled design on its cover by David King. Crass was formed from this project, and King’s design became its main logo. Rimbaud’s booklet was later set to voice and music as the Reality Asylum 7” single in 1978.
Through vintage photographs and scans of Crass’ hand-produced visuals, this book shows the labor that went into producing the band and its related projects. Rimbaud notes the accessible nature of the stencil, with Crass merging and punning the word with existentialism to name their publishing outlet Exitstencil Press. An anecdote from 1979 recounts “stencil runs” inspired by Paris graffiti in the underground (subway systems) where band members used stencils to critique offensive advertising, demonstrating the efficiency, accessibility, and readability of stencil fonts as a crucial device for Crass graphics. As stencils were often associated with military, industrial, and commercial packaging, Crass’ appropriation of this technology became an ironic tool in their anti-war and anticapitalist declarations, adopted by many punk and alt bands afterward. Two examples of songwriting reveal Crass’ scope and innovation, dovetailing the book and the band’s history. Original typed, taped, and scribbled-over lyric sheets for 1979’s Stations Of The Crass appear just as urgent as the album’s message. 1984’s Acts of Love, a collaborative project where Vaucher’s enigmatic paint and collage images accompany Rimbaud’s words and Eve Libertine’s vocals over classical music, serves as the band’s denouement.
Vaucher’s commercial illustration works are peppered throughout the book, without specific credits, as part of her interconnected collage-timeline with the group. Clippings of negative reviews accompany photos of Crass gigs, lyric sheets, other bands’ flyers, and various writings. Many of these images are layered over photos of graffitied walls with shredded flyers and posters, creating a collage effect parallel to Semi Detached, a collection of Vaucher’s films (1978–1984) that accompany Crass’ music, which use repetition and glitching, featuring scenes of war, English monarchy ritual, colonial violence, and degradation. English by birth, Vaucher was an illustrator for The New York Times and New York Magazine early in her career, then returned to Dial House to continue freelance illustration work and to develop Crass’ visuals. You may know Vaucher’s Oh, America (1989), originally published as an album cover for the band Tackhead, depicting the Statue of Liberty expressing shame and exhaustion. This image was widely recirculated after Donald Trump won the presidential election in 2016.
This book has no critical insights from academics or anyone outside Crass’ circle, as is standard in institutional surveys of artists and movements. You, the reader, are invited to draw your own conclusions and connect the book’s graphics, music, and lyrics with political and social events and your own reality. As a retrospective overview, Crass: A Pictorial History, is a marked departure from institutional texts such as the exhaustively-researched recent exhibition and book Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines at the Brooklyn Museum.
The phrase “There is no authority but yourself” served as the throughline of Crass’ ideology/anti-ideology, printed on the banner that accompanied the band’s live performances. These words also framed the entrance to Vaucher’s recent exhibition CRASS OVER – Gee Vaucher: Crass & Beyond at the gallery White Columns in New York. A retrospective planned in conjunction with the book’s publication, the exhibition featured a similarly layered timeline of archival materials and Vaucher’s original designs in gouache and photo collage for Crass’ six studio albums and a large assortment of her later works. Friends’ flyers, photos, posters, stencils, and Crass record posters (like the one my parents tore off my own teen-era wall) were carefully disbursed over tables and walls. As with the book, no labels or wall text identified these archival objects at the gallery, all the materials were laid out in chronological order, literally with no labels, a.k.a. “didactics,” on the wall to identify who made what, what material it was, or who owned it. In the absence of labels, the friends, fans, collaborators, and strangers who filtered in during the show’s opening could be present with the works themselves, being their own authority. —Veronica Cross
Zerox Machine takes the reader through the early days of fanzines and its history. Author Matthew Worley notes that while zines were born primarily from sci-fi enthusiasts wanting to share which novels they were reading, punks took part in creating a spectacle of their local areas to counteract mainstream media. By writing about local scenes, people were able to network in other cities and share demos, events, and their work. This brought a lot of scenes together, such as those related to the bands Throbbing Gristle, Gang of Four, and Crass. Reading Zerox Machine is not like a time machine, since distribution processes in Britain are very similar to today’s world where one can leave their work at record stores or bookshops, but Worley manages to write about the making of these scenes as titillating and uproariously funny while noting the argumentative factors of bands selling out once they’ve hit mainstream media. While today we have the internet and less print media to circulate, zines are still alive and well and Zerox Machine is an inspiring and interesting look at the history of punk music and how scenes come together. —Sara Nicole Storm
Through larger-than-life propwork, heartfelt performances, and clever writing, Out Of The Boil: A Climate Change Musical delivered a lighthearted, relevant, rollicking good time at the New Marigny Theatre. Bawdy, queer, and union-friendly, writer Rel Farrar’s solidly satirical narrative centers around a cast of archetypical New Orleanian crawfish characters—bartender, nurse, waiter, teacher, social worker. Bedecked in all red, they grapple with their concerns about their increasingly unlivable city. Enter the “Crawfish in a Bucket Grant” from antagonist Chef Bezos (Ratty Scurvics), offering them a solution—but only if their idea is a perfect fit for the capitalist agenda. Full of pointed jokes, the play lambasts Entergy, public transit, local school and health care systems, the service industry, Amazon, Tesla, and more. Scurvics’ incredible rendition of Chef Bezos as well as the mansplainy-transplant-devil’s-advocate-heel-tech-guy character offers a blatant ethical measuring stick for the other characters to evaluate themselves by (“Capitalism is not only necessary, it is morally right” and “These issues are nothing the free market can’t solve!”). The venue and staging brought the performance down to Earth with playful touches and audience-involved dance numbers. Pacing issues prevailed in the first act, and the lovably off-the-rails second act didn’t quite answer all the questions raised. But the real success of this work is that it made heavy, intimidating topics feel fun and approachable. The play was thought-provoking without taking itself too seriously. It felt like a joke we were all in on. I left the theater thinking about the issues covered, but not filled with dread. While the ending left something to be desired, it was fitting. Because what it demands is the action we must take to keep the pot from boiling over with us crawfish inside it. After all, “You can’t be neutral in a boiling pot.” —Terra Durio
You Really Suck, an original musical written by Ben Fox, is an addition to the lengthy catalog of New Orleans’ vampire media—but a welcome one. Marco Flambeau is a 400-year-old vampire with the dubious accomplishment of being the first vampire to sail ashore to the Americas—don’t worry, he hated his Puritan brethren. Flambeau (played by Fox) is a pouting and pampered queen whose kingdom is a gay bar in the Quarter where his every need is seen to by his familiar, Tamnesia Reprieve (a.k.a. Tammy, played by an utterly scene-stealing Justice Hues). We lay our scene on Decadence eve, when the bar has hired three new gays to handle the crowds of revelry-seekers—not knowing that the three belong to a secret order of vampire slayers, and are tasked with ending Flambeau’s afterlife. Meanwhile, a gust of football has blown the LSU Tigers into town to play in the Superdome. But as two teammates venture into Flambeau’s bar—purely to get free drinks, you understand—one of the young athletes catches Flambeau’s eye. You Really Suck embraces its campiness, but holds on with sharpened teeth to the culture of queer New Orleans with a smart, hilarious script and a knockout cast singing original melodies by Fox and Matt Kruft. At turns ribald and heartwarming without ever taking itself too seriously, You Really Suck’s triumphant two-week run celebrated two of New Orleans’ most cherished institutions: local artists and creatures of the eternal night.1This review originally incorrectly credited Ben Fox as the director; he is the creative director of the production company. —Jesse Lu Baum
